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President Donald Trump announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a large new warship he calls a “battleship” as part of a broader vision to create a “golden fleet.”
“They will be the fastest, the biggest and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The ship, according to Trump, will be longer and larger than the Iowa-class battleships of World War II and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are still being developed by the Navy.
Just a month ago, the Navy abandoned plans to build a new small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was in production until recently. The Sea Service also failed to build its other newly designed ships, such as the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and the Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.
Historically, the term battleship referred to a very specific type of ship: a large, heavily armored ship, armed with massive cannons designed to bombard other ships or shore targets. This type of ship was at its peak during World War II, and the largest of the American battleships, the Iowa class, weighed approximately 60,000 tons.
After World War II, the role of battleships in modern fleets rapidly declined in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The U.S. Navy upgraded four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s with cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, as well as modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy’s fleet, sometimes with an eye toward retaining older technologies instead of modernizing them.
During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for a return to steam catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newer aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.
He also complained to Phelan about the appearance of Navy destroyers and lamented that Navy ships were covered in rust.
Phelan told senators during his confirmation hearing that Trump “sent me numerous text messages very late at night, sometimes after one (a.m.) in the morning” about “rusted ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it.”
During a visit to a shipyard that worked on the now-canceled Constellation-class frigate in 2020, Trump said he personally changed the ship’s design.
“I looked at it, I said, ‘This is a horrible ship, let’s make it beautiful,'” Trump said at the time.
He said on Monday that he would also play a direct role in the design of this new warship.
“The United States Navy will lead the design of these ships with me, because I am a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
